“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” – Jesus
In 1972, the famous Utilitarian moral philosopher Peter Singer published an essay titled: “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” that argued that we have a moral duty to help those in poverty far across the world. In doing so, he echoed a sentiment that Jesus shared almost two millennia prior, yet which most people who call themselves Christians today seem relatively unconcerned with.
From a deeply moral perspective, we live in a world that is fundamentally flawed and unjust. The painful truth is that the vast majority of humans on this Earth live according to a kind of survivorship bias, where the systems and beliefs that perpetuate are not right, but what enables them to survive long enough to procreate and instill a next generation where things continue to exist.
For most people, life is hard enough that questioning whether the way things are is right is something of a privilege that they cannot afford. For others, this questioning requires a kind of soul searching that they shy away from because it would make them uncomfortable to even consider. It’s natural to imagine yourself the hero in your own story. To question this assumption is not easy.
But the reality is that most all of us are in some sense complicit in the most senseless of crimes against humanity. When we participate in an economy to ensure we have food to eat, we are tacitly choosing to give permission to a system of relations that is fundamentally indifferent to the suffering of many. We compete with fellow human beings for jobs and benefit from their misery when we take one of only a limited number of spots in the workforce. We chose to allow those with disproportionate power to decide who gets to live a happier life. And those in power act to further increase their share of power, because to do anything else would lead to being outcompeted and their organization rendered extinct by the perverse incentives that dominate the system.
Given all this, what can one even begin to do about it? Most of us are not born into a position where they have the power to change the world. Our options are limited. To be moral, we would need to defy the very nature of existence. What can we do? If we sell everything we have and give to the poor, that still won’t change the nature of the world, even if it’s the most we could conceivably do.
What does it mean to defy destiny? What does it look like to try to achieve something that seems impossible?
What exists in opposition to this evil? What is good? What is right? What does it look like to live a pure and just life in a world filled with indifference and malice? What does it mean to take responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences of those actions?
Ultimately, it is not in our power to single-handledly change the world, but there are steps we can take to give voice to our values, to live according to what we believe to be right. This means making small choices about how we behave towards others. It means showing kindness and consideration in a world that demands cutthroat competition. It means taking actions that bring light into the world.
Even if we, by ourselves, cannot bring revolution, we can at least act according to the ideals we espouse. This can be as small as donating a modest amount to a charity in a far off land that corrects a small amount of injustice by giving the poorest among us a bednet that protects them from malaria. If approximately $4800 $5500 worth of such things can save a life, and minimum wage can earn you $32,000 a year, if you modestly donate 10% of that to this charity, you can save about three lives one life every two years. If you work for 40 years, you can save about 60 23 lives this way. Those lives matter. They will be etched into eternity, like all lives worth living. (Edit: Corrected some numbers.)
Admittedly, to do this requires participating in the system. You could also choose not to participate. But to do so would abandon your responsibilities for the sake of a kind of moral purity. In the end, you can do more good by living an ethical life, to lead by example and showing that there are ways of living where you strive to move beyond selfish competition, and seek to cooperate and build up the world.
This is the path of true defiance. It does not surrender one’s life to the evils of egoism, or abandon the world to the lost. Instead it seeks to build something better through decisions made that go against the grain. With the understanding that we are all living a mutual co-existence, and that our choices and decisions reflect who we are, our character as people.
We do not have to be perfect. It is enough to be good.